Abstract:
This award supports a project to study dust sources in Antarctic ice cores. Atmospheric aerosols play an important role both in global biogeochemical cycles as well as in the climate system of the Earth.

Purpose:
Records extracted from Antarctic ice cores inform us that dust deposition from the atmosphere to the ice sheet was 15-20 times greater during glacial periods than during interglacials, which raises the possibility that dust may be a key player in climate change on glacial-interglacial timescales. By characterizing potential source areas from South America, South Africa, and Australia as well as ... fresh glacial flour from Patagonia, the project will determine if the interglacial dust was mobilized from a distinct geographical region (e.g., Australia) or from a more heavily weathered source region in South America. The intellectual merit of the project is that it will contribute to reconstructing climate-related changes in the rate of dust deposition, and in the provenance of the dust, it will provide critical constraints on hydrology and vegetation in the source regions, as well as on the nature of the atmospheric circulation transporting dust to the archive location.